Gordon and the Banshee
by EDD17SP
Summary: One cold and stormy winter night, Gordon tells Percy a chilling story from his past.


**One day at work, a sudden thought popped into my head. I suddenly remembered a book that I checked out at the library when I was very little, and thought to myself "Hmm…I could easily adapt that into a Thomas and Friends story."**

 **So I did. Here it is. Hope you enjoy it.**

Gordon and the Banshee

Gordon stared at the shed door, watching as snow pelted against the glass windows. Somewhere, the wind whistled through an unseen gap, filling the shed with a low, ghostly wail. On either side of him, the other engines all slept soundly, but Gordon could not convince himself to close his eyes.

A stronger gust of wind howled through the gap. Gordon stifled a cry.

"Gordon?" came a whisper.

Gordon glanced to his left. Beside him, Percy had opened a sleepy eye. "Are you alright?"

The big engine sighed. "Yes, Percy, I'm fi-"

Another icy blast of the wind sent up an even louder shriek inside the shed. Gordon froze.

Percy could see the look of pure terror written across Gordon's face. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a little wind," he teased, still whispering.

"It's not the wind," Gordon said. "That sound…it just reminds me so much of…" He looked away. "Something I would rather not discuss."

Percy was rather puzzled. He could see that something was clearly pressing on Gordon's mind, but he had never been very good at getting the big engine to open up. "Um…alright. If you want to talk about it…it may make you feel better…I'm here."

There was no reply. Gordon had resumed staring ahead at the shed door in front of him. Percy decided to just close his eyes and go back to sleep.

"It was 1925…"

Percy awoke with a start and looked at Gordon. The big engine was still staring straight ahead, but he had begun to speak, slowly, just above a whisper.

"…on a night…well, not much like this, actually. There was snow, but…it was so quiet…and that was the worst part of all…"

And as Percy listened intently, this is the story that Gordon told…

 _November, 1925_

It was late. Gordon sat idle in the Vicarstown station as flurries fell lightly upon the blanket of snow covering the ground beyond the station canopy. His express coaches, vacant, their lights extinguished, were coupled behind him.

It was a bitterly cold night, yet very still. No wind rustled the bare trees. It was almost as if the air itself was frozen. Even with his warm boiler, Gordon's axles still shivered. His driver and fireman drank coca in the cab, keeping Gordon's fire going more with the intention of staying warm than keeping his steam up.

"I would have thought that 'goods' would have cleared the signal by now," the fireman said.

"So would I," the driver replied. "I'd go ask the station master if he's heard anything, but I have no desire to step out there in the cold."

The fireman took a sip of his drink. "Agreed."

The station door swung open, and the station master ran over and jumped up into Gordon's cab.

"Good LORD, it is cold out there," he said as he rubbed his hands together near the glowing firebox.

"What's the hold up, Pete?" asked the driver. "We were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago."

"There's another 'passenger' from the Other Railway coming from behind that was delayed earlier by frozen points. I was told to let it pass before I gave you the all clear."

"Shunted!" Gordon scoffed. "ME! Shunted! It's disgraceful!"

The station master chuckled. "Your train is an 'empty', Gordon. Don't forget that. You aren't the only one who wants to get home safely."

Just then they heard the puffing of an approaching train. All three men peeked out of the cab, looking behind.

"Speak of the Devil." The station master gave them a grin. "As soon as the signal drops, you are clear to proceed."

"Thanks, Pete. See you 'round."

The station master tipped his hat in reply before jumping down to the platform and sprinting through the cold back to his office.

A black engine roughly as large as Henry pulling six coaches slowly rolled through the station without stopping, and then accelerated as the last coach cleared the station throat, disappearing into the darkness.

Several minutes passed. Gordon's eyes were glued to the signal, waiting for it to show 'all-clear.' Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the signal arm dropped.

"C'mon, let's go," Gordon grumbled. "I want to get back to my nice, warm shed."

The driver laughed as he released the brakes and opened up the regulator. "I know, Gordon, I know. I want to get home, too."

The train slowly rolled out of the station. Gordon was grateful that there was no wind. The icy air moving past his face was frigid enough as it was.

Their pace was slow. Speed was not a necessity with an empty train, and with the possibility of slippery rails, ill-advised. A gray blanket of clouds overhead mirrored the white snowy one on the ground, blocking the light of the moon and stars. Gordon glided steadily past the silhouettes of dark towns, and hills hibernating beneath the snow, with only his headlamp to guide the way. They rolled through two stations without stopping, the signals all showing that the way ahead was clear.

At the steady, low-speed pace they were keeping, Gordon didn't require much steam to hold the coach's momentum, so the fireman stoked the fire leisurely. He casually tossed a shovel full of coal into the firebox and closed the doors. Then he leaned his shovel against the side of the cab and rested his arms on the sill of the window. He stared out at the black abyss around them, the only illumination the reflection of the light from Gordon's firebox against the snow on the ground.

Something caught the fireman's eye, behind the train, and he looked back.

"Say, Robert," he said slowly, "I'm not imagining that, am I?"

"Whatever it is you're looking at, I am not sticking my head out the window into the cold," laughed the driver.

"I really think you should look, though."

Gordon could hear them talking. "What is it?" he asked.

The driver looked back out of the window on his side of the cab. "Glory…" he breathed. "It looks like…"

In the far distance behind the train shone the single pinprick of light that was unmistakably-

"A headlamp."

"That's absurd!" Gordon scoffed. "There are no other trains on the schedule tonight, certainly not any coming from the mainland!"

The fireman was just as puzzled. "Not only that, but why wouldn't it have stopped at the station? Surely he would have seen the signal was up."

"Unless the cold has the signal frozen in place." The driver put his hand to the throttle. "I think we had better put some distance between us and them," he said, pulling the lever open a little further. "They probably have no idea we're here."

Gordon picked up speed and the fireman tossed a few more shovelfuls of coal into the firebox. Then he returned to watching the light behind them. "It doesn't look like we're getting any further ahead," he said. "If anything, that light is getting closer."

The driver said nothing, but he increased Gordon's speed to half throttle.

"The rails are getting rather slippery," Gordon said after several minutes. "Maybe we shouldn't be going quite this fast."

"They're still gaining on us," the driver replied. "And they still have no idea we're here. We don't really have much of a choi-"

A high-pitched whistle cut off his words. Its frequency was so high that it sent chills down Gordon's boiler. Then it came again, and again.

"What an awful whistle," Gordon groaned. "And doesn't that engine know there isn't supposed to be any whistling this time of night unless there's an emergency? He'll wake up half the island!"

"Unless…" The driver froze. "They know we're here."

Both men looked back. The light in the distance was no longer a pinprick. It had grown substantially.

"Well, if those jokers want a race," said the driver, pulling the regulator open against its stop, "then, by God, we'll give them a race."

"Indeed we will!" Gordon called as he accelerated, already forgetting about the increasing slickness of the frozen rails. "All we have to do is beat them to the next signal. Once we pass it and it changes to 'danger,' they should stop."

"Exactly!"

The fireman began to shovel for dear life. Gordon's siderods became a blur as they pounded his drive wheels into the rails. As they thundered across the countryside, the speedometer needle slowly moved further clockwise until Gordon had nearly reached his top speed. His wheels simply did not have the traction required to accelerate him any further.

The fireman looked back. "I don't believe it! They're _still_ gaining on us!"

"That's impossible!" the driver cried, looking back to see for himself. Sure enough, the headlamp light behind them had grown even closer, though he still could not see the train that it belonged to. "Gordon is faster than any engine the Other Railway currently has!"

"There's a signal ahead!" Gordon called.

They raced under the signal, its arm moving from "All clear" to "Danger" as they passed. When the fireman looked back, he could clearly see that the signal had changed position.

"They'll have to stop now!"

The driver and fireman both watched intently until the light behind them passed under the signal. It showed no signs of slowing down.

"They aren't stopping," muttered the driver. "Gordon, can you go any faster?"

"I'm going as fast as I possibly can," the big engine replied. "I probably could go a little bit faster if the rails were dry, but these snow flurries are making me slip."

The shrill whistle called out again, louder now that the chasing train was closer. It was so high pitched that the driver and fireman covered their ears, and Gordon cringed.

"I do think that engine needs to get a proper whistle. I'll have to mention that to it if it doesn't run us off the rails."

For another three miles, they surged on, watching the headlamp light behind them grow brighter still. For every mile they traveled, the whistle would sound again, each blast a bit louder than the last.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up this pace," Gordon said. "My wheels are slipping very badly."

"We're almost to the viaduct," said the driver. "Beyond that, it's just a bit further to your hill, hopefully that will slow him down."

Gordon did not reply. Something was wrong. He suddenly found that he could no longer pull, and his speed was decreasing.

"Gordon?" the driver called in alarm as his eyes caught the needle of the speedometer dropping. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know!" the engine cried back in a panic. "I can't pull!"

The driver quickly checked the gauges to see if Gordon was losing steam, but nothing seemed to be wrong.

"Did we knock a hole in a brake pipe?" the fireman asked. "Are the brakes slipping on?"

"No! The brakes aren't coming on! I just can't pull!"

And then Gordon's headlamp flickered and went out, plunging him into darkness. Lacking his only source of light, Gordon could not even see the rails in front of him.

For half a mile more they slowed. The train behind let out a deafening shriek of its whistle as it drew ever nearer.

"It's going to hit us!" the driver yelled as the speedometer needle dropped below 10mph.

Gordon replied, "GO! JUMP CLEAR!"

His crew quickly leapt from the cab, tucking and rolling as they tumbled into the snow.

A few dozen yards further, and Gordon came to a stop. As the sound of his puffing ceased, he could hear the chugging of the train approaching behind him growing louder. It whistled long and deafeningly high, so high that it no longer even sounded like a steam whistle, but instead like a ghostly shriek.

Gordon shut his eyes as the noise grew until it seemed to be on top of him.

And then it stopped. There was silence.

Gordon opened his eyes.

And then, the shriek returned, so intensely loud that it engulfed Gordon's entire world.

And with it came the images.

Gordon could see the inside of a smoke box, boiler tubes, the firebox, the inside of a cab, the driver and fireman at their posts. Then coal in the tender, and then the inside of a coach. Nearly every seat was filled, their occupants mostly dozing in their seats. Five more coaches followed, each as tightly packed as the first.

When the last coach passed, the piercing shriek abruptly ended, and Gordon was left in the empty blackness once again, staring into a startlingly empty void.

A minute later, his driver and fireman walked up alongside. "Gordon?" the driver asked. "Are you alright?"

"I…I suppose so."

"Where did it go? It just…vanished!"

"It…it passed through me."

"Through you?" The driver and fireman looked at each other. "But…that's impossible."

Then Gordon's headlamp flickered on again.

"Driver…where are the rails?"

They looked. Their eyes went wide in disbelief and terror.

"Glory…"

After the driver and fireman had jumped clear, Gordon had rolled about halfway onto the viaduct before coming to a stop. Less than a yard beyond his buffer beam, the rails were twisted and broken off where a large chunk of the middle of the bridge had crumbled away beneath them.

As if by magic, the clouds overhead suddenly parted and the moon cast a soft glow over the island. In the new light, Gordon could see something. Despite his warm boiler, Gordon suddenly felt a chill. A ghostly mist was drifting up from the gap before him. "Steam…" he whispered. "From below."

The driver and fireman slowly walked to the edge and peered down into the ravine. They could see that the icy surface of the frozen river had been shattered, and poking up from the surface was the outline of a coach, stacked haphazardly on top of another below it. And on the bank, half submerged in the frigid water, was an engine, steam still rising from its superheated boiler.

"It…it's the train that passed us earlier," said the fireman.

Gordon froze. "That's who was behind us," he said.

"What?"

"It wasn't chasing us. It was trying to _warn us._ "

The driver's eyes went wide. "It was a banshee," he said. "It wasn't whistling at us at all. Banshees shriek as a warning to others. It was trying to tell us that the bridge was out…" He glanced down into the chasm again. "…so that we wouldn't suffer the same fate…"

They stood in silence for a moment, just looking at each other. Though no one said it, and no one investigated, they knew that there was no rush to raise the alarm.

There was no one down there to save.

Gordon had fallen silent, and had been so for several minutes. Percy was beginning to wonder if that was the end of the story, and was really hoping that there wasn't more.

But then, Gordon began again.

"The 'goods' we had been waiting on was the last train across. When that passenger went by, the center section of the bridge collapsed out from underneath it."

He paused.

"And no one made it."

Once again, Gordon fell silent. Percy was about to say something, but then Gordon spoke again.

"It took a long time for me to forget about what I had seen. It's not the kind of thing one easily forgets. I had not thought about that night for a very long time, years. But the way the wind whistles through that crack, wherever it is…it sounds exactly like that ghost, shrieking at me…trying to tell me, to warn me, that I needed to stop."

Percy didn't want to interject, but there was something about the story that just didn't make sense. "Gordon? If you didn't understand that the other engine was trying to signal to you to stop…well, then…why did you stop?"

"I honestly have no idea. When we finally decided to return to the station, I had no trouble moving. We were never able to find anything wrong with me or the coaches that caused me to stop."

"Maybe-" Percy stopped himself.

"What is it?"

"Well…maybe…it _made_ you stop?"

Gordon's eyes glossed over. He stared straight ahead at the shed door again. "Goodnight, Percy."

And the big engine said no more. Percy did not press for any further discussion.

He was too busy thinking about how he was ever going to fall back to sleep.


End file.
